| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: observers, and was in fact a tribute to Japanese technique rather
than an appreciation of Far Eastern artistic feeling. The truth is,
the foreigners brought to the subject their own Western criteria of
merit, and judged everything by these standards. Such works
naturally commended themselves most as had least occasion to deviate
from their canons. The simplest pictures, therefore, were
pronounced the best. Paintings of birds and flowers were thus
admitted to be fine, because their realism spoke for itself. Of the
exquisite poetic feeling of their landscape paintings the foreign
critics were not at first conscious, because it was not expressed in
terms with which they were familiar.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: But consider, Mr. Muller, that the man's work would naturally make
him a little different from other people. I have known Gyuri for
five years as a faithful and unassuming servant, always willing and
ready for any duty, however difficult or dangerous. He has but one
fault - if I may call it such - that is that he has a mistress who
is known to be mercenary and hard-hearted. She lives in a
neighbouring village."
"For five years, you say? And how long has Cardillac been here?"
"Cardiliac? He has been here for almost three years."
"For almost three years, and is it not almost three years - "
Muller interrupted himself. "Are we quite alone? Is no one
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: women grow old nowadays through the faithfulness of their admirers
than through anything else! At least that is the only way I can
account for the terribly haggard look of most of your pretty women in
London!
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. What an appalling philosophy that sounds! To
attempt to classify you, Mrs. Cheveley, would be an impertinence.
But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those
seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.
MRS. CHEVELEY. Oh, I'm neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin,
and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of
them merely poses.
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